What if I told you that my most intricate melt and pour soap design was actually the easiest of them all? No, really, It’s true. Embossed soap, using melt and pour soap base, is the easiest bar of soap you will ever make. It’s the perfect bar of handmade soap for gifts and for the guest room. It’s the perfect bar of soap for the beginning soap maker as well as the advanced soap maker. Most importantly, it is the perfect bar of soap for you.

Why Make Your Own Embossed Soap?

Let’s face it, life can be hard. Money is tight. Naturally, the opportunity to turn some time in the tub into a mini vacation, a self therapy session, a moment to simply relax, can go a long way to recharging our batteries. All of this for the cost of a simple bar of handmade soap? Well, count me in.

Customize Your Embossed Soap Using Essential Oils

Aromatherapy is a well known stress relieving, mood enhancing, science. If I were making this melt and pour embossed soap in the summer, I might choose a scent to help me unwind after a long day in the garden.

Because my family is facing a few unexpected challenges right now, I’m choosing Young Living’s StressAway. Due to it’s happily calming blend of Lime essential oil and Vanilla is just the thing to help me find my zen.

1. Take your texture stamp and cut it to the size of your soap molds. You will want a good pair of scissors to do this with. If you choose the soap mold I listed above, the size of your texture mat will be 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches. I then cut this texture mat into two pieces of 3 x 2 inches each to fit into two of my soap mold cavities. This gave me the ability to make 2 embossed soaps at a time.

2. Chop up your goat milk soap base into chunks and place them in the Pyrex measuring cup.

3. Next, pulse your soap in 30 second increments in the microwave, stirring in between each pulse.

4. Use a bit of that melted soap base as a ‘glue’ to glue the texture mats to the bottom of your soap molds. This will help to keep the soap base from flowing UNDER your mats when you go to pour your soaps.

5. Let the soap ‘glue’ dry.

When To Add The Essential Oils

6. Check the rest of your melted goat milk soap base to see if you need to pulse it in the microwave again. If it is still pourable, add your Young Living Essential Oils, 4 drops of Stress Away per bar of soap.

You do NOT want your base to be super hot when adding your oils. Due to their nature, essential oils will ‘burn off’ when added to soap that is too hot. Remember, if you can’t let you finger comfortably rest in the melted soap base, it’s too hot!

*If by chance you choose to add *this post contains affiliate links liquid colorant to your soaps, do this right before you add the essential oils.

Pouring The Soap Bars

7. Now it’s time to pour the soap base into the molds with your texture mats. You don’t want your soap to be too runny, as that will make it easier for it to run under the texture mats. A little thicker, cooler soap is what you want. Hence, if you can’t let you finger comfortably rest in the melted soap base, it’s too hot!

Additionally, you can use your finger to hold down the texture mat inside the soap mold too. This will help keep the soap from flowing under that texture mat.

However, if something does go wrong, it is very easy just to re-melt your base and try again. I told you this was the easiest bar of embossed soap you will EVER make!

8. Once you have poured your soap bars spritz them with the alcohol in your small bottle. This will remove any bubbles on the back of the soaps. Don’t move the mold until the soap has set up. Just let it all hang out on your counter and firm up.

9. Once your soap is very, very, very, very solid, pop out the bars and peel off the texture mats!

10. Using a sharp knife, or vegetable peeler, clean up the edges of your soap if you would like.

11. Viola’ Beautifully intricate, wonderful smelling soap! Time to to peel off those clothes and hit the shower or tub! heh.

While we may not be able to avoid all of the stresses life throws our way, there are things we can do to keep the damage as minimal as possible. Something as simple as a beautiful, easy to make, embossed bar of sitting at your sink waiting for you to wash you hands, can go a long way in making life a little bit kinder.

Laundry can be the bane of a Mom’s existence. No sooner than you think you’ve got it all caught up, the piles have reproduced. Again. I’ve been looking for frugal laundry hacks to reduce the cost of doing laundry, as well as the time involved in getting clothes clean. As an added bonus, I’ve been able to reduce my family’s exposure to chemical laden dryer sheets. Pretty important considering my youngest son’s complex medical considerations.

What Is A Wool Dryer Ball?

*this post contains affiliate links: Wool dryer balls are balls of wool that have been ‘felted’. The woolen balls have had their fibers disrupted, usually by being placed in hot water, agitated, and then dried. I use and prefer these.

How Do Wool Dryer Balls Work?

Wool dryer balls work by separating clothes so that warm air circulates better. The felted wool gently rubs against garment fibers, softening clothes naturally. They fluff by separating clothes that would otherwise clump together. This is especially helpful when doing comforters, towels and heavy jeans.

Save Time and Money

Wool dryer balls allow clothes to dry faster, thus reducing your energy costs, and time between loads.
It costs approximately 45 cents to dry a load of laundry in an electric dryer, based on a 5,600-watt dryer, 40-minute run-time, and a 12-cent-per-​kilowatt-hour rate. And that is just ONE load! Wool dryer balls can cut that time by as much as 20%, simply by improving the air flow in your dryer.

Reusable Frugal Laundry Hacks

A dryer sheet is meant to be used once and tossed. Wool dryer balls can be used for a 1,000+ loads! These are the brand I use and love.

Are These Safe For Cloth Diapers?

Yes! Dryer sheets and liquid fabric softener leave a coating of chemicals behind on your items. This is how you get that soft feeling. Unfortunately, that thin coating affects how absorbent the cloth diapers will be. The same holds true for towels.

I Want My Clothes To Smell Good.

The best part of my frugal laundry hacks is that it’s easy to custom create scents for each load of laundry! NATURAL scents with essential oils.

Here are a few of my favorites! Add each oil to a separate wool dryer ball. Use 4 dryer balls for a medium load. 6 wool dryer balls for larger loads. Put 4-5 drops of an essential oil on each dryer ball. You can usually get 3-4 loads of of laundry out of the dryer ball before you need to add more essential oil.

Man, I could go on forever here. But I think you get the idea, be creative and come up with your OWN best laundry day scents! Can you imagine a laundry day that makes you feel good because of the uplifting blends you are using?

Of course, I’ve made the choice to use Young Living Essential Oils in my home. I’m amazed at all I received in my Young Living Premium Starter Kit!

More Frugal Laundry Hacks

1. Make sure your laundry loads are full. The less you run your washer and dryer the more money you save.

Emergency Planning Basics

Food Storage

We are grab and go breakfast people at our house. Since my kids were little, the best way to make sure everyone at my house got a good breakfast was to have ready made items like muffins, stashed away in the freezer. Luckily, this Ham and Cheese Egg Muffin Recipe is super easy to make […]

Alternate Uses

Why Worry About Preparing?

Preparedness for a disaster makes a lot of sense. With recent and predicted events like Hurricane Sandy, The Colorado Wildfires, Fiscal Cliffs, and rising food and gas costs just in 2012 there is no denying that things are changing in our world. Whether or not you believe "The End of the World As We Know It" is near there are plenty of everyday things to worry about: loss of a job, health emergency, local weather events to name a few.

I find that I worry less about the big "what if's" out there the more emergency planning my family does to deal with the unexpected. I will share the survival tips and tricks I have learned while on this preparedness journey and hope that you join in with lots of comments. We all have a lot to learn from one another.

Now, lets get started prepping! Pick a post and start reading. At the end of every post the blog randomly selects three more survival posts for you to check out. Set aside 10 minutes a day to build your preppers knowledge base. We can never be done learning or prepping, right?